personal protection in the heat, ticks, poison ivy?
- Thread starter MAXA
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johnjk
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B3200 w/loader, Woods RC5 brush hog, 4' box blade, tooth bar, B1700 MMM,
I never got poison ivy till about 5yrs ago. Now I look at it and get it. Now if I am cutting wood, long sleeves, long pants and wash exposed skin with dawn and post wash I wipe down with some 90% rubbing alcohol on my hands and arms. If I get it, it winds up being a dose of steroids to get over it. Ticks, I treat in the spring and do tick tubes. They have not been a problem this summer so far besides I can be in the brush all day and not get one, the wife walks to to compost pile and gets 3. Let’s talk chiggers. Now there is something I really despise.
As do I, along with no-see-ums
Just seeing that makes me itchy LOL. I'd burn that along with the wood it's sitting on!
I had two berry bushes fall victim to poison ivy last year. They'll actually break an older bush right in half from the weight if you don't catch it.
Lit them both up right where they were....Just went and tended to some others opposite side of the field to avoid the hospital trip.
Years ago when I cleared the land to build a house I burned enormous piles of brush that contained plenty of poison ivy. The smoke hung low in the air and drifted back over the hill. The next day in church a neighbor from over the hill came in and was covered with red hives, he asked me what I was burning. If you burn it, stay far away from the smoke.
johnjk
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B3200 w/loader, Woods RC5 brush hog, 4' box blade, tooth bar, B1700 MMM,
The worst I ever saw anyone get it was my BIL. He didn’t know what it looked like and went after it with a string trimmer. It was way up in some pine trees and he was smashing that stuff above his head. Drenched with sap and vine pieces. He ended up in the hospital for a few days with the only clear areas being his feet and where his shorts were. Hot day, no shirt, big mess
alphagal disease. Never know you have it until one day you eat a burger and a few hours later you're breaking out in rash, etc, and for no apparent reason. Write it off as some kind of unknown allergy, and next time you have a steak, same thing.
One of my coworker's wife has it. My ex BIL has it as well.
The coworkers sat down to eat a dinner the other night, just some hot dogs (turkey dogs). She can't have red meat so that's that. He bit into one and asked her why she got regular hot dogs and by then she'd already had two. She said I didn't I got turkey dogs. A few hours later she's broken out, sweating, etc. They dug the package out of the trash and it was labeled turkey dogs, but according to him they were half turkey and half beef hot dogs. I haven't heard any more about it, she's ok now, but he's still ticked that the store sold packaged dogs that were supposed to be turkey, and turned out to be beef. She also an avid deer hunter and that sucks because she can't eat the venison that she worked so hard to harvest. Can't have anything to do with red meat and there is a lot of foods out there that are made with some kind of red meat.
All from...a tick bite.
that's me. I am highly allergic to the smoke. I have had angioedima from it, couldn't breathe, rash, etc. Of course when I live out here, it never fails SOMEONE is gonna burn that stuff off and when there is smoke in the air, I go in the house. I have to keep an epipen as well. Angioedima is rough.
I'd avoid the alcohol, because it will actually dissolve the urushiol oil and spread it around. If you use cold water and soap when you wash, virtually all of the oil will be washed off.
Compound names that end in -ol (like urushiol), are technically alcohols. But, if you chill a compound like that, it will tend to thicken up (like oil) or solidify (like wax). Your body heat (or hot water) will take it the other direction, and disperse it more widely on your skin. That's one of the reasons that poison ivy seems to 'spread'.
-Paul
Man, that thing looks 15 years old! I've cut some that large before. I typically leave the 'aerial' part just hang in the tree until it dries and falls off by itself. [When I was a kid, I got a nasty case of poison ivy rash from swinging on dead poison ivy vines - in the dead of winter! In Iowa!
I'd bet that if you chucked that piece in a hole, it would sprout...
So ya, you gotta be careful that what you cut off doesn't have a chance to sprout and regrow. I keep a couple of "burn piles" in hidden places, so that I can pile the aerial part of cut brush up so it's not touching the ground. But, I don't actually burn those piles unless they're an eyesore. Makes good cover for small animals and ground birds (rabbits, turkeys)! Brush hoo-doos!
-Paul
NCL4701
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If you count the rings it appears to be at least 25 years old. This wasn't the largest that I cut, it was just one that I missed when making an effort to eliminate or reduce the inventory. One thing that helped was to cut the vines and wait till they grew about six feet since it was impossible to spray to the top, then soak them with Roundup to kill the roots and all.
Part of my usual routine after a day landscaping is a thorough shower, scrubbing everything (sometimes twice) while carefully feeling for ticks. It keeps the sheets clean and me smelling good, and likely why I've been ivy and tick-borne disease free from the sound of this thread.
Removing ticks and plant oil within 5 hours (on average) keeps risks minimized as ticks generally require around 12+ hours to transmit disease. Long cotton fiber clothes keeps most of the stuff off me to begin with, so that's where most of the risk is reduced.
Removing ticks and plant oil within 5 hours (on average) keeps risks minimized as ticks generally require around 12+ hours to transmit disease. Long cotton fiber clothes keeps most of the stuff off me to begin with, so that's where most of the risk is reduced.